For those of you not familiar with THE WHOLE COSTUMER'S CATALOGUE, it was a resource book developed for costumers/crafters/fiber artists/home sewers/quilters etc. to help locate vendors selling the raw materials or accessories they needed for their various projects. Think of it as an annotated "Yellow Pages of Costuming." The book survived in print form from 1983-1998, and went through 14 editions in those 15 years. It was always a time-consuming update project once a year as new companies were added and existing companies moved, changed ownership, or went out of business.

I always figured the book eventually would be made obsolete as more and more companies acquired web sites and as Internet search engines became more efficient. However, in 2000, I was still getting frequent requests for the book (the 14th Edition had just gone out of print), so I thought I would do a 15th Edition and then do a "reality check" after that to see if future printed editions were necessary. Alas, a major source of funding for the 15th Edition print run collapsed, plus I just didn't have the time to complete the Herculean task of updating all the listings, and the 15th Edition never happened.

I left the files for the book parked on my computer, and tried to keep them updated as I saw or received new information regarding various companies, but I didn't do it methodically for all the listings. Periodically, I thought about trying to resurrect the 15th Edition, but my time and finances had not improved enough to make that possible. Nevertheless, to this day, I still receive multiple inquiries per week from people wanting a more current edition of the book.

Now, with the inception of Costume-Con.com, I felt it was time to just upload the existing files and make THE WHOLE COSTUMER'S CATALOGUE available online. The WCC started its life as a handout at Costume-Con 1, and many of the editions were published to coincide with past Costume-Cons, so it seems natural that this resource should "live" on the current Costume-Con site. If you find the information in this resource useful, PLEASE SUPPORT COSTUME-CON by attending one of its conventions, or by making a donation to costume-con.com or costume-con.org.

I hope you enjoy THE WHOLE COSTUMER'S CATALOGUE Online.

--Karen Dick
Managing Editor since 1991

SOME QUICK TIPS FOR USING THE WHOLE COSTUMER'S CATALOGUE ONLINE

PLEASE BE PATIENT while we go through the somewhat tedious process of bringing a 200+ page book with 1100+ listings online, correcting any "translation" glitches between the original Corel Ventura Publisher files and HTML, and correcting the contents of the listings themselves to bring the information up to date. Most individual listings are marked with the last time they were updated or verified. If a listing is not marked at all, the information is 8+ years old and could be extremely stale.

Because some of the listings are old, and just as a common-sense thing, you should contact the vendors in the listings before attempting to visit them, as any number of things may have happened in the 8 years since the last edition, from changed business hours to going out of business completely.

To browse the listings, click on a letter of the alphabet. If you are looking for something specific, like "shoes," or "wigs," or "busks," use the "Find In Page" function of your browser to search for the desired keyword. We hope to have a more sophisticated search function up soon.